


The Him and the Her

by Siria



Category: Bones (TV)
Genre: Community: help_haiti, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-16
Updated: 2010-02-16
Packaged: 2017-10-07 08:11:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/63140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I'm just saying, I don't see why I have to wear the hat," Booth said.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Him and the Her

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Yahtzee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yahtzee/gifts).



> Written for help_haiti; a couple of days late, but thanks to yahtzee63, not a few dollars short. I hope this answers your prompts, Yahtzee! Thanks to trinityofone for betaing.

"I'm just saying, I don't see why I have to wear the hat," Booth said. The white chef's toque on his head sagged sideways, and he batted at it ineffectually, trying to make it stand upright.

"My dear boy," Gordon replied, "as my grandmother always said—a very wise woman, if somewhat prone to clichés—if something is worth doing, then it's worth doing properly. The hat is traditional. It provides a certain air of gravitas to the proceedings, don't you think?" He was stooped over a pot full of a boiling French something or other, his head enveloped in steam, but his own toque still stood starched and straight. Booth glared at it.

"All I said was that I wanted to learn how to make good mac and cheese!" Booth protested. He folded his arms over his chest; between the hat and the itchy polyester trousers and the big white coat, he felt like an idiot. The only things he was wearing that were his were his own were his underpants (blue plaid) and his socks (orange and black stripes). He wiggled his toes inside his ugly, slip-proof shoes as he tried to face down Gordon; the wool was comfortingly soft.

"But it is a process, Agent Booth," Gordon said. He paused, tasted whatever it was that was bubbling away on the stove, smacked his lips together for a moment, and then added a pinch more salt. "As with so much in life, we can only achieve our goals if we are willing to put in effort along the way—the hard slog, as it were. And part of _this_ process is dressing the part, inhabiting the _rôle_—the more you feel yourself to be a chef, the better your cooking will become."

Booth heaved out a long-suffering sigh. He had no idea why he'd thought it was a good idea to ask Gordon for help with a Valentine's Day meal, but he was starting to think it was something to do with all the trauma to the brain he'd suffered over the last few years. "You know, maybe Kraft Mac and Cheese isn't so bad after all. And it's a childhood thing, you know. That's pretty traditional."

Gordon pulled himself up to his full, impressive height and raised both eyebrows. "You wound me, sir. We will have none of that talk in this kitchen."

"Fine, fine." Booth rolled his eyes. "We'll make it your way. So where's the pasta."

"Ah ah ah," Gordon said. "That's not the first step." He pressed something into Booth's hand.

Booth looked down at it, confused. "What do I need a vegetable peeler for?"

Gordon pointed over at a station in the far corner of the kitchen. On a countertop next to an industrial-sized sink was a heap of dirt-covered potatoes. "Hop to it, grasshopper."

"You have got to be kidding me." Booth had seen smaller mountains in the Appalachians. "Why do I have to peel potatoes?"

"As the eminent philosopher Lao Zi once said, _Qiān lǐ zhī xíng, shǐ yú zú xià_—the journey of a thousand _li_ begins with a single step. Those potatoes are your first step, Master Booth." Gordon beamed at him before turning back to his stove. "Have at it!"

***

Booth gingerly tried to pick up the paper cup of vending machine coffee that Brennan had set in front of him. The coffee was scalding hot, the mug barely less so, and with almost all of his fingers covered in bright blue band-aids thanks to an uncooperative vegetable peeler, just getting the mug to his mouth was a tricky proposition.

Brennan sat down opposite him at her desk and peered closely at his hands before opening the case file. "So how exactly _did_ you injure yourself? I'm not familiar with the kind of weapon that would cause such widely dispersed injuries. If it was a knife, either your assailant was lucky but ineffectual, or you are remarkably clumsy."

Booth resisted the urge to sit on his hands. There were times when he really hated Brennan's mix of perception and stubbornness. Cam had just cocked an eyebrow at him and said, "Honestly, what you do on your down time, Seeley? I don't want to know about." Angela had smirked at him and asked, "Was it something kinky?" Brennan, on the other hand, had taken one look at him that morning and started _theorising_, like he was some kind of problem to be taken apart by that big ole brain of hers.

She'd even taken his hands in hers, turning them this way and that in order to measure approximate distances between injuries. The brush of her cool fingertips against his palms had forced him to think desperate thoughts—cold showers and the quivering mole on the face of his third grade teacher and that one time they'd found a body in a grease trap—and God help him but it hadn't worked. Booth had known for a while that he was in trouble where his heart was concerned, but realising that not even Sr Briege's upper lip was effective any more drove it home to him. He was kind of screwed.

"Can we just focus on the case here, Bones?" He took a sip of the coffee and made a face. No matter how little sleep he'd had the night before, he wasn't sure even caffeine was worth drinking more of this. "You know—mummified headless guy, Muppet costume, yellow feathers everywhere?"

"I am focusing on it," Brennan said, holding one set of X-Rays up to the light and frowning at them. "The pelvic girdle looks as if it has sustained repeated crush injuries. Hodgins might be able to gather trace evidence to help us identify what weapon was used. We'll be able to tell more once Mr Nigel-Murray has pieced the bones of the right hand back together." She placed the X-Rays neatly back in the file and continued, "I'm merely pointing out that any unusual lapses in your behaviour warrant attention in light of your recent medical history."

"I am not experiencing any _unusual lapses_," Booth protested. He looked over at the open door, hoping that none of the squints had heard that—the last thing he needed was misplaced sympathy (Hodgins), innuendo (Angela), or brisk common sense (Cam). The only lapse he'd experienced lately was going to Gordon Wyatt for help. "And can we use our indoor voices, please?"

Brennan looked at him blankly. "We're inside the Jeffersonian, Booth. Any tone of voice I use is an indoor voice by its very definition."

Because Booth was a responsible adult with an apartment and a kid and an FBI badge and a gun, he didn't let out a strangled scream and beat his head off the desk. "Let's just go interview the guy who found the body, okay? He should be out of the hospital by now."

"Okay," Brennan said, shrugging her suit jacket back on and giving him that look—the one that said _you do not fit into any known anthropological categories, and I find that frustrating_. "But if you are experiencing further symptoms—"

Booth pointed at the door. "Go, please. Now."

"Okay, okay," Brennan said, both eyebrows arching. "I'm going. There's no need to be rude."

"I'm not being rude!" Booth said, spreading his hands wide. See this, this was what had driven him to go speak to Gordon—half the time he wanted to kiss her, half the time he wanted to slap _himself_ for wanting to kiss her.

"I think by the standards of mainstream interaction in contemporary North American society, your tone of voice and physical gestures mean that your behaviour would be considered rude," Brennan persisted.

Booth sighed. He knew he should have put on his lucky socks that morning.

***

"I don't get what this has to do with pasta either," Booth said.

"I think you'll find an even rhythm will work the best," Gordon said. "Though the angle of the wrist, perhaps, could be better."

Booth sighed and shuffled his feet and shifted his grip on the knife a little. He'd already sliced and diced so many onions that he thought his tear glands were about to resign in protest. He swiped at his cheek with the back of one hand and picked up another onion from the stack. "You know, if this is some kind of attempt to get me in touch with my feelings or something"—he paused to sniff—"it's not very subtle."

"Come, come," Gordon said. He was deboning a duck in a very efficient manner with a very sharp knife; despite himself, Booth was impressed. "Surely you don't think so ill of me, Agent Booth? There is no double-dealing in this kitchen, I assure you. You are merely preparing an essential ingredient of _soupe francaise à l'oignon gratinée_—do you think the great Julia Child would have neglected such a foundational step when preparing it?"

"I don't think Julia Child was a masochist," Booth pointed out. He added yet another mound of thinly sliced onion to the pot. "You, on the other hand—this is sadistic."

"Not at all," Gordon said, in a voice so mild that Booth was instantly suspicious. "You asked for my help, and I am providing it."

"With onions."

"Exactly! We begin to agree. How delightful."

"I don't think this counts as agreeing."

"And I don't think that counts as a properly sliced onion. Once more with feeling, as I believe they say." Gordon picked up the now perfectly boneless duck and placed it on a sheet pan before picking it up and carrying it into the walk-in meat refrigerator. His voice floated out from behind a side of beef. "You must practice until the motions are instinctive."

"What kind of motions do I need to make _pasta_?" Booth called after him, exasperated. This was what he got for thinking he could do something romantic for Bones—something that would finally let him know if her answer to the idea of them was yes. Ever since that case they'd had a couple years back—the glowing bones of a celebrity chef found inside an old stone house—they'd ended up at Bones' apartment at least once a month sharing crusty Italian bread, a bottle of red wine and two bowls of mac and cheese. Bones had refined and adapted the recipe she'd gotten from Carly Victor so that now it was Booth's definition of comfort food. So sue him for thinking that if he managed to make it just the way Bones liked it—complete with leeks and some fresh ground nutmeg—it would speak to her in a way she could understand, turn into some symbol that would make her eyes light up before she started spouting her regular brand of mumbo jumbo.

_Carly said I could go with my instincts_, Bones had said the first time she'd made it for him, _so I put in a little fresh ground nutmeg_.

"Stupid instincts," Booth mumbled to himself. Look where impulse had brought him this time—sweating in a corner of an over-heated kitchen, working according to the orders of a weird English chef whose only present outlet for his psychological wonkery was forcing Booth into bizarre vegetable-oriented slave labour.

"You do realise you are speaking out loud, I presume," Gordon said lightly when he re-emerged from the refrigerator.

Booth resolutely did not flush—but maybe he chopped the onion in front of him with more force than it really deserved.

***

Cam strode across the lab floor towards them, her blue high heels clicking rhythmically. Booth stood up as she approached; his grandpa had always taught him to be polite to a lady. "Well, we've finally found the head. Or what's left of it."

"Where was it?" Brennan asked, looking up from what she was doing. Between her and Nigel-Murray, they'd mostly pieced together the crushed right hand; the cleaned, bleached-white bones lay splayed out on the table in five even lines.

"Angela's computer simulation was accurate." Cam folded her arms over her chest. "It travelled a couple of miles down the Anacostia and washed up on the west bank of the river, in Anacostia Park. Some guy out walking his dog found it this morning. The FBI is bringing it over to us now."

"Once we have the victim's teeth, we should be able to verify his identity from his dental records." Brennan looked over at Booth and beamed. Her enthusiasm was infectious. "And an identity means—"

"—motive, exactly." Booth grinned back at her.

Cam made a face. "Well, maybe not."

Brennan frowned at her. "I don't see why not. It's an entirely logical line of inference."

"It would be," Cam said, "if the dog hadn't found the head first. The FBI are bringing it in along with the head, and I am…. Well, I'm probably not going to have lunch today. Head should be here in the next quarter hour or so. Until then, carry on." She nodded briskly at them, and then headed back towards her office.

"The dog _ate_ part of this guy's skull?" Booth asked, his voice shading higher in disgust.

"I don't know why you seem so surprised," Brennan said. "The domestic dog is a scavenger. There was a case in Quebec last year where two chihuahuas—"

Booth held up both hands in mock surrender. "Trust me when I say I don't want to know."

"Your lack of intellectual curiosity—"

"I am not lacking in curiosity!" Booth protested. "I'm just saying that there are things I prefer not to have in my head, and the image of chihuahuas doing _whatever_ is one of them."

Brennan shook her head sadly. "No rigour at all."

"Hey!" Booth said, "I have rigour! I have plenty of rigour!" He stopped and reddened when he realised what he'd said, every terrible joke he'd ever sniggered over as a sixth grader coming back to haunt him.

"Of course, Booth," Brennan said simply, stooping back over her work. The line of her back was straight, her fingers precise and methodical as always as she worked—but Booth thought he saw a twinkle in her eye, a suppressed dimple in her cheek, and for a moment, he wondered if that was mischief he saw in her expression, if in some strange, Bones-like way she was flirting with him. He'd been wondering that more and more lately—every time her shoulder brushed against his in a crowded corridor; when her smile turned conspiratorial at the edges; when they'd lain on the hood of a car together, looking up at a star-strewn desert sky.

Brennan frowned in concentration at her work. Around them, the lab hummed along quietly—the squints in their heaven and all right with the world. Booth leaned back against the table, ducked his chin, and grinned.

***

"You want me to make beef burgundy?"

Gordon made a pained face. "_Boeuf bourguignon_, please. And yes, you have the recipe there in front of you, and the ingredients of this kitchen are at your disposal. Spid spod, on you go."

Booth tried to hand the recipe back to him. "You know that Bones is a vegetarian, right? What's the point of me learning how to cook something she's just going to turn her nose up at?"

Gordon steepled his fingers together. "And there I'm afraid I must counter your question with another one—what makes you think you came to me just to learn how to make something for Dr Brennan, hmm? There are any number of cookery books out there which would help you plan a meal. Perhaps _Mastering the Art of French Cooking_ might not contain a recipe for the dish which you so charmingly refer to as 'mac and cheese', but I am sure your _Joy of Cooking_ contains a recipe or three."

"Are you trying to do psychology on me?" Booth gestured at him. "Is this psychology? Because I thought you'd given up on—"

"Now, now," Gordon said. "I believe this falls under the heading of common sense, Agent Booth. I am merely inferring from everyday lived experience, as it were—speaking to you as one friend does to another."

"And common sense is telling you that I have to make buff… whatever?"

"Just so," Gordon said. "And it's also telling me that you're going to need some time to think this over. Luckily this will take about four hours to make, so you have ample time ahead for contemplation."

Booth sighed, scrubbed at his hair with his hands, and turned back to the prep station. "You know, I could have gone to the Flyers' game this evening. I could have gone to a bar with some of the guys. I could be somewhere that is _not here_."

"And yet despite all of those distractions, here you are," Gordon said calmly. "How remarkable."

Booth started studying the recipe with a concentration even one of the squints would have been proud of. It wasn't that Gordon was _right_, of course not—it was just that if something was worth doing, it was worth doing properly.

Though Gordon was correct about one thing—you did have an awful long time to think, waiting for a restaurant-sized batch of beef burgundy to stew.

***

"This is ridiculous," Booth said for the fifth time. "I have a college degree, I'm a grown man with a job and a kid and the ability to shoot people between the eyes from very far away, and you have me wearing _this_?"

Brennan rolled her eyes at him. "I don't know why you're being so uncooperative, Booth. If we're going to find out who was blackmailing Mark Pugliese before his death, then you're going to have to go undercover."

"Dressed as an overgrown chicken." The suit, which was round and blue and made him walk funny, wasn't exactly well ventilated. Booth could already feel sweat starting to trickle down his spine, and he shifted uncomfortably. Damn thing was itchy, too.

"You're going undercover as a puppeteer on a children's TV show, Booth. It's not an unreasonable expectation that you know how to operate one of these suits." Brennan went up on tiptoe to put the suit's head on him.

"Wait, wait," Hodgins said, voice vibrating with laughter, before she could fit it onto Booth. "I need to get a picture of this."

"No pictures of this," Booth said, pointing at him. "None, I mean it. I know where you live and I carry a gun."

"That would be a lot more threatening if you had opposable thumbs right now instead of feathers covered in glitter," Hodgins said. "Smile for the birdie!"

Booth drew in breath to yell, but before he could get so much as a syllable out, the camera flashed and Brennan plonked the head down on him. Inside, it was dark, and the suit stank of old sweat and stale cigarette smoke. Booth coughed, choked by the smell. He'd had to search for evidence in dumpsters that smelled less disgusting than this. "Did someone die in this one too?" he asked, resigned, as Brennan took him by the arm and guided him down the steps.

She came to a sudden stop, and Booth almost stumbled and fell down the last two steps, blue wings flailing. "Have you found evidence inside that suit? Booth, this could be very important, why didn't you say so sooner?"

"Figure of speech, Bones, figure of speech." Booth peered out the tiny eye-slits—located beneath the suit's curved beak—at her. "Are you—wait, are you messing with me?"

"I never joke when it comes to evidence, Booth. You should know that by now," and she tugged him on in the direction of the door and the waiting FBI van—but there was something in the curve of Brennan's smile that gave him hope.

***

"So," Booth said. He'd been pacing back and forth across the length of Gordon's kitchen for the past fifteen minutes. The rhythm and bustle of the kitchen had adapted itself to his presence, line cooks and commis chefs flowing around him. "I think I've got a chance. I'm going to ask her this afternoon. 'Lunch on Sunday at my place, Bones—how about it?' That's informal enough, right? Not coming on too strong?"

Gordon didn't look up from his work— "_Pâté de canard en croûte_," he'd informed Booth when he'd arrived, "Time consuming but, I think you'll agree, more than worth it."—but he cocked his head to one side, considering. "I see one possible flaw in your approach."

"What?" Booth said, sticking his restless hands into the pockets of his jeans. "_What_?" For the last few weeks, he'd been feeling more and more on edge, as if he were permanently over-caffeinated. Angela had cut him off from all supplies of coffee at the Jeffersonian with a pat on the back of his hand and a knowing, "Oh, sweetie. Frustration is never a good look on you."

"Well, it is a mere five days before Valentine's Day," Gordon pointed out. He was carefully scoring leaf-shaped pieces of dough with the back of a knife before arranging them on top of the duck, which was already swaddled in pastry. "Dr Brennan is an attractive, intelligent woman who has no shortage of admirers. What makes you think that she has not already made alternative plans for the day?"

Booth gaped at him. "She wouldn't! I mean," he said, forcefully jabbing a finger in Gordon's direction, "if there was anyone else, she would have told me."

"Anyone else?" Gordon said, in that too-light tone of voice that meant he'd found what Booth had said _very interesting_ and was making a mental note of it.

"No head doctor stuff!"

"There is no psychoanalysis within the boundaries of this kitchen, as I have explained to you many times, Agent Booth," Gordon said, stepping back from the now-prepared duck with a low noise of satisfaction. "There is only a striving towards culinary perfection."

And later, Booth had to admit that the meatloaf duck did indeed taste pretty damn good.

***

"I was thinking," Booth said. He and Brennan were hunkered down behind a low stone wall, the only shelter they could find from the bullets that Tipton was raining down on them from a submachine gun. It said a lot about the turn that Booth's life had taken over the last few years that he couldn't regard the sight of a man dressed up in a fuzzy flamingo costume, armed with an Uzi and holding a much-beloved, prize-winning children's puppet hostage with anything more than mild bemusement.

"Yes?" Brennan said. Despite the fact that she was dressed up as one of Zippy's Happy Helpers—her hair in pigtails, a feathered hat on her head, wearing patchwork dungarees with a smear of someone else's blood on her temple—and was sitting next to him in the dirt, she looked composed. The expression on her face was expectant, waiting, and if it hadn't been likely to get them both killed, Booth might just have kissed her then and there.

"You free on Sunday?" Booth said instead, checking his gun again. He'd already managed to send a text message back to headquarters, requesting back up, but he didn't know how long it would take for them to get here and it was better to be safe than sorry. He risked a cautious glance over the top of wall. Tipton may have been carrying on an animated conversation with the limp puppet at his feet, but he was reloading the Uzi with a practised ease that made the adrenaline pulse just a little faster through Booth's veins.

"I don't have any existing plans, no," Brennan said. She swatted at his gun arm. "Are you going to let me shoot him? I am a very good shot, I could easily make it from here."

"No, I am not going to let you shoot him!" Booth hissed. "How many times have we been over this?"

"Your refusal has no basis in logic."

"It has a basis in me not wanting you to get yourself killed! Just… sit there and wait. The uniforms will be here soon." Away in the distance, Booth could hear the wail of sirens—they just had to hang on for another ten minutes.

"Fine," Brennan said, just a little sulky, and subsided next to him. Carried on the breeze, Booth could hear Tipton singing something to himself—it sounded like the theme song of _Zippy and Friends_. Creepy. Booth shook his head. He'd never been so glad that Parker was now past the age of watching the show, though probably the next time he was over at Rebecca's, he was going to make sure all Parker's much-beloved DVDs ended up in the garbage.

He was concentrating so steadily on Tipton that he was unprepared when Brennan said, "And if that is an invitation, then yes—I accept."

"What?" Booth looked back down at her.

"I inferred—using an awareness of your behaviour patterns and knowledge of certain anthropological tropes—that your inquiry about what I'll be doing on Sunday was a roundabout way of asking if I would spend it with you. And if that is indeed what you were asking, my answer is yes."

Booth leaned back against the wall, letting it take his weight. "Just like that, huh?"

"I have been engaging in a certain amount of introspection recently, and looking back at the past several months, I think it's possible for me to say that my answer has been yes for quite some time now." Brennan's expression shifted from pleasure at her success in understanding what was going on, to a kind of nervous hope, and back to a Cheshire Cat grin.

"Well," Booth said, feeling inordinately pleased with himself. "Yes. Great. Okay then."

They grinned at one another for a long moment, and then Brennan's eyes widened as her attention was caught by something over his shoulder. "Uh. Booth. The man in the flamingo suit is standing directly behind you and holding a gun."

And then things got a little bit crazy for quite a long time.

***

"So _now_ are you going to show me how to make this amazing mac and cheese of yours?"

"I take it from your cheerful demeanour that the invitation which you extended to the good Dr Brennan was accepted?" Gordon was doing something complicated with spinach and egg whites. He was wearing a red and white striped neckerchief tied at a jaunty angle—a concession, he'd informed Booth when Booth had walked into the kitchen, to the holiday.

"Yes, yes, she did and she's coming over to my place tomorrow and I have promised her mac and cheese. I've promised her mac and cheese that's just as good as what she makes for me, so if I don't deliver, then—"

"Heavens above," Gordon said, pouring his concoction into a baking dish. "Such anxiety about your masculinity is perhaps—"

"I'm not anxious about my masculinity!" Booth snapped. "Wait, am I—what are you picking up on, Doc? Because my boys can swim, there's nothing wrong with me—"

"Oh, come, come, Agent Booth," Gordon said, popping the dish into one of the kitchen's large ovens. "I was merely, as you Americans say, 'joshing you'."

_Joshing me_? Booth mouthed silently.

"I do not impute any fears about your sexuality to your desire to ensure that your first date with Dr Brennan is a successful one."

At the words 'first date', Booth's left foot started tapping—a nervous tic he'd never quite managed to get rid of. He tried to disguise it by clearing his throat and pretending he was being authoritative, impatient. It sucked that he was very sure he wasn't fooling Gordon at all.

"However," Gordon continued, "I would ask you this question."

"Okay," Booth said. "Shoot."

"You have been spending several hours a week in my kitchen for the last two months," Gordon said, straightening up and looking Booth right in the eyes. "You've persevered through vegetable peeling, potato mashing, and stock straining. You've learned to make a passable _boeuf bourgignon_, a creditable _pain au chocolat_, and quite a succulent _bistecca alla Fiorentina con rucola_. You've had the patience and good humour to put up with a working environment which has proved too much for many a dedicated chef." He threw his hands up in the air. "What on earth makes you think that you haven't learned the skills necessary to make something so simple as macaroni and cheese?"

Booth blinked. "Huh."

"I trust you will not chide me for breaking my own self-imposed ban on _head mumbo-jumbo_, as you so delightfully term it, when I point out two things to you. First, that there was never a reason for you to seek out my help; second, that you need to trust in your instincts, Seeley. They are what help to make you such a formidable FBI agent; I believe they shall serve you just as well in matters of the heart."

"Oh," Booth said. "Huh." He hated it when the man made sense.

"Now, enough of that," Gordon said. "I have been experimenting with some of your American cuisine, and I think I will need your help in consuming the results."

"What is it?" Booth said, letting Gordon lead them over to the chef's table.

"An extra-large pecan pie," Gordon said, producing it with a flourish. "To be served in authentic American style—_à la mode_."

Booth clapped his hands together. "Then I'm your man."

***

"This looks excellent, Booth." Brennan had worn her hair up and away from her face; around her neck, she'd put the chunky blue necklace Booth had given her for her last birthday. He was trying not to feel too pleased about that.

He set a bowl of crusty French bread, fresh from the oven, on the table in front of them, before taking a seat at the table. "Well, you know… dig in," he said, voice tinged with nervous laughter. He picked up his fork and sent up a hurried prayer to whichever saint happened to be listening—and hoped to God this wasn't a case for Jude—that it had turned out okay. Booth had done just like Gordon said, followed his instincts, and added his own flair to the sauce—some flakes of hot red pepper, a little bit of Dijon mustard, four different kinds of cheese and some garlic. He took a tentative bite, and then felt his spine relax. It was better than okay, it was—

Brennan's eyes were wide. "This is really very good. You added red pepper?"

"Yeah, well." Booth shrugged, feeling sheepish, and reached for a piece of bread. "I just thought I should experiment a little, you know?"

"There is a common idiom which says that it's the spice of life!" Brennan said, looking as pleased and as eager as she always did when she thought she'd gotten some saying right.

"That's variety, Bones. _Variety_ is the spice of life."

She grinned at him, unrepentant. "I've always thought it was a little of both."

He was helpless to do anything other than smile back at her—caught by the mischief in her eyes, by the curve of her smile, by the fact that he was head-over-heels, stupid in love with her. "Temperance," he said, hoping that she didn't pick up on how his voice cracked in the middle.

"Are we doing this now?" she asked him, blunt as ever, and something in Booth's stomach turned over at the even promise in her voice.

"Maybe," Booth said. "Yes. Definitely. I mean, if you want to—" But then all his words were stopped by the press of her lips against his, by the feel of her hand against the nape of his neck, by the scrape of her blunt nails against the fine hairs there.

"That is a definitive yes from me by the way," Brennan said as she crawled onto his lap, mac and cheese and two months' preparation and six years of waiting all forgotten thanks to the warm weight of her.

"I kind of got that, Bones," Booth said, a little distracted by the feel of her collarbone against his mouth.

"I just wouldn't want there to be any unresolved ambiguities," Brennan protested, her fingers deftly unbuttoning his shirt.

"Then maybe we should make sure you have plenty of empirical evidence," Booth suggested, sliding down the zipper on the back of her dress.

"I am very pleased that you're showing greater scientific accuracy in your habits of thought!" Brennan said, delighted, pressing her hips down against his.

And then neither of them thought anything much, not for a long time.


End file.
